Mumbles is taking this season off. We may have another host join at the end of January. I’m still working on it. Announcements will follow.

In my defense, Deus Ex: Original Flavor looked and sounded fine on my computer, but the resulting broadcast was a horrific mess for the other hosts. I could fix it by switching DE to OpenGL mode. That would work, but only if I retained the default of 16bit color and super-low resolution. If I changed those, the game would crash. I am once again reminded of just what a fantastic Rube Golberg contraption our setup is. It’s a miracle this show works at all.

For whatever reason I went ahead and dove right into the the AC2 season. That was mostly because I thought I wasn’t going to play it. I had previously played a few hours worth of AC1 and AC2, but they didn’t really grab me.

Funny enough after watching the better part of the AC2 season I decided to go ahead and give them another shot. Plus people were apparently wanting to get me things for Christmas so I asked for AC1 & 2 (ended up getting 1-4 — score!). So, now I’ve beaten 1 (which felt like a slog, honestly) and I’m firmly in 2 and having way more fun. Even sort of knowing what’s going to happen it’s still fun exploring and doing a lot of the stuff that wasn’t covered in Spoiler Warning.

Definitely planning on playing Human Revolution, though. But, Steam has made me way more cheap than I already was so I was waiting for a good deal — luckily they had it for $17 during the Holiday sale, so now it’s firmly in my game queue, along with so, so many more games.

/signed, his DX10 fix works great – I had it running with the New Vision textures too, which improve things tremendously as well. I can send you my Deus Ex configs with the DX10 entries and if you have Steam’s GOTY edition, info on how to make that work with Kentie’s fix. Just email me if you want it :)

It was fairly obvious by the midpoint of AC2 that she wasn’t really into the whole Spoiler Warning thing (or at least that game). I’m not surprised she’s taking this season off, given how bored/unenthusiastic she sounded by the end.

Given that we may get a random mystery commented here are my guesses for the possible new host:

Yeah, Ruts is right. I’m just taking a breather this season cause I couldn’t play Human Revolution in time to commentate on it. I’ll be back next season unless I have to fight this new cast member to the death for my spot back. In which case, I’ll be back with a severed head on a pike.

Personally I think the ME2 season benefited from having Rutskarn as a cast member who didn’t play the game (or did he just not finish it? Anyway, he didn’t know the whole plot). It was kinda fun to hear what someone who wasn’t aware of how a given arc descended into stupid thought of the plot as it showed up. That said during the AC2 season it was sometimes obvious you weren’t really into it and I can understand not wanting to get into such a position again, the series is much more fun when you guys are also having fun.

Listen, everyone knows AssCreed2 was a personal disaster for me. The game didn’t impress me at all and while I’m sure that Human Revolution is a great, gold tinted game, I didn’t want to try the patience of fans and my cast mates. I joined Spoiler Warning because I wanted to bring some silly optimism to the cast and I don’t think anyone likes the person I turn into when I hate a game. If you’ve read my blog or really know anything about me, I don’t like to talk about stuff I hate. It’s a waste of time when there’s so many things out there to love.

Some people don’t have time to dive into a blitz of a whole game, or don’t have time to do it Right Then. And by Right Then, I mean “while rolling through the holiday season filled with family obligations”.

This was my game of the year. This was the game that introduced transhumanism to me. This was the game that, of all the game stories I’ve played through this year, made me sit down and think. This is the one game out of the year that I felt was special. I’ve clocked more hours into replaying this game than I have into Skyrim.

I think I am the only person in this room who can justifiably say this:

Beat it until it either fades from existence (Bossed somehow get patched out), Revived (Somehow patched into not horrible), or the developers prove they’ll never kill horses (Outsource important stuff) again.

I wasn’t actually surprised that Sarif didn’t actually turn out to be evil. He seemed like an idealistic, morally flexible person who would do a lot of things, but never at the expense of turning him into a villain. Turns out I was right!

And I’ve seen complaints that people don’t like Sarif’s voice actor. I don’t understand that at all. To me, Sarif’s voice actor fits perfectly with the character.

Myeah.. the only complaints are usually about Adam’s VA (it is quite amusing to see people claiming that the VA did a poor fake voice, given that it is his natural voice, as Ruts said). But David’s? Haven’t really seen any complaints on that anywhere.

The only downside is that when the twists come, they’re even more pedestrian and obvious. It was really clear from the start that the Humanity Front leader was up to no good, as was his second. Obvious foreshadowing is obvious, etc. I do like the realism and complexity of the characters relative to other games – they have a sense of depth and personality that goes well beyond their simple exteriors.

Sarif’s “cool boss you could have a drink with” attitude is genuine, but he also has a lot of history and nasty things he’s had to do in order to become successful, the kinds of things you can easily see an idealist in life falling for as he gains more experience in the world and has to make tough calls. Pritchard’s wanton jerkishness early in the game gives way to a light snarky attitude and it becomes clear that a lot of it is kind of just a facade or coping mechanism for him, without an ulterior motive. Megan is quite possibly the most devious, manipulative and outright evil character in the game depending on how you interpret her.

The only characters I really don’t like are Malik, Darrow, and maybe Tong. Malik doesn’t really have much of a character arc save for “obvious love interest in a skin-tight flight suit”, Darrow is just too much of a walking cliche (and I found his reasons for doing things really weak and self-centered for someone supposedly so intelligent and forward-thinking), and Tong, while strong as far as personality goes, doesn’t have a good motivation for helping Jensen for most of the game – sure, you can convince him to help but it’s not clear what he’s gaining and his character seems more like an excuse to get Jenson from A to B.

Still, the fact that Human Revolution had an actual writer who was integrated into the game creation process itself really, really shows. I still think the fiction is weaker than the original game’s, the issues are presented as straw men that makes it hard to explore them in depth, and the sheer scope of the issues is pared back significantly (transhumanism was only a single part of the first game’s canvas), but it’s still worth heaping praise on. If there was ever an argument for games as a medium capable of addressing important and relevant issues in intelligent ways, Human Revolution is it.

Actually the issues are straw men because they are presented to you by the proponents of both sides.Of course humanity front will present augs as bad,while sarif will present humanity front as a bunch of lunatics.Thats how most people will give you information in the real world.The hotter the issue,the more vocal those types of people will become.And transhumanism is quite a hot issue in the game.

As for malik,you have to admit that its a good thing they keep it professional even if you save her life.You never get anything more than light flirtation.

Pritchard’s resentment gets explained a lot better when you read his emails and see his rejected TV show pitch. It’s about a hacker who basically solves crimes from his office, but the studio thought it wasn’t interesting enough and maybe the main character should be some sort of ex-cop.

With Darrow, I think you’re forgetting that low personal empathy with other people isn’t disassociated with high intelligence at all. It often goes hand in hand. And he seemed forward thinking because he was always about himself. It’s like Steve Jobs, fantastic designer, hailed as a great visionary, used his money to cheat the law so he can park in disabled parking spaces (Not that Steve Jobs was like Darrow), he’s blind to the flaws in his reasoning because he’s too self-obssessed to realise he’s self-obsessed

The only issue I have with Darrow, is that his foreshadowing was the least subtle thing in the game. He actually turned out a lot more complex that the English accent, low threating pauses, dark lighting and evil music suggested

My issue with Darrow is more that the way you speech him to death is through emotional bullying than a rational appeal.

If you think back to some villains, like the Master from Fallout, you don’t just say “what you’re doing is wrong, now have some puppy dog eyes”, you use your persuasive skills as well as hard evidence (his mutants are infertile) to convince him to give up. In Mass Effect, you’re able to get through to the “real” Saren and convince him to kill himself in order to stop the Reaper threat before it gets worse (it doesn’t quite work, but whatever). In Arcanum, you have an interesting philosophical argument with Arronax and eventually convince him that his perspective on death is flawed.

Point being, Hugh Darrow breaks down because you are able to shatter the rational wall he has put up through an emotional appeal. I would have been much happier if Adam’s arguments were based more on facts and logic than on “but killing is inherently wrong!” Instead Adam could have said “there are other ways to remove augmentations from the world, or help regulate and reduce the threat they pose.” That right there would have been a lot more compelling than “you’re a murderer, little man!” Yes, there are different ways through the conversation but they all more or less follow the same path, just with different degrees of bullying.

Here’s the thing. We expect strong villains to be complex, to have good motivations for what they’re doing even if they’re flawed. The best villains can be understood by the audience in the sense of “if I were in that position, I might do the same thing.” The ambiguity of what’s right and wrong, and the realization of how good intentions can start a journey towards evil helps us identify with the characters.

Within that is an implication that a villain has already dealt with the emotional issues – that he or she has had to morally justify his or her actions in a way that’s comfortable (though not necessarily correct). Hugh Darrow, by my reading, comes across much more as an egomaniac who did not even think about his actions before going about them, and it makes him look stupid. That’s why the lack of a rational deconstruction stands out so much – if he’s willing to so easy buckle when faced with the reality of what’s done, then it makes him look like a much weaker character.

Of course, it doesn’t help that they gave him the cheesiest, most faux-British “I’m an evil genius” accent on the face of the Earth.

I agree with this. Practically the whole plot near the end broke down for me because all the people trying to tell you to make their choice was ranting like Doctor Doom. Having all these interesting characters suddenly talk like a super-villain really took me out of the game.

But in neither of those other games are you using chemical pheromones and other tricks to support your oppinion.Here,you are.Its not just your words that do the trick,its your face,body language,and a dose of chemicals you emit.So its not that you point him how morally wrong he is,you find out that morality is his weakest point,nd you press it until he shatters.

There are mad people in the world though. I get where you’re coming from, but since there were also established antagonists with much more rational viewpoints (I loved the fractured way the Illuminati were represented as in general) I felt it was okay to have a madman.

In a way, it’s like Doctor Strangelove, there are a lot of ways you can accept the Illuminati ideal as reasonable, but they don’t account for the fact, that if you give men so much power, it just takes on lunatic to press the switch. Whilst I failed because I tried to reason with Darrow, I feel, in hindsight, it’s clear reasoning wouldn’t work because _it came from another person_ which he doesn’t recognise as valid. That may feel bad to you, but it’s a character type that exists in the world. Karl Marx claimed you could only have truth from the perspective of the oppressed, but often the oppressed couldn’t see that because they were influenced by the upper class. He was essentially saying that any argument that disagreed with his argument, was wrong because it didn’t come from him and therefore couldn’t be trusted.

And this is a guy, who by many peoples views, wasn’t insane. In fact Karl Marx and a lot of the dictator-communists have a lot in common with Darrow. They believed they were doing a right for people, that the people themselves couldn’t understand. That the only way to do it would be through the blood of the people they wanted to save and they viewed themselves as some kind of bet upon personal saviour

It’s a good point, but Darrow isn’t really set up as being insane and I don’t think he’s intended to be. He’s a smart man with tons of money and power who now sees his creations having far more effect on the world than he’d like – a bit like Oppenheimer but not so clear-cut as far as the bad side goes. His motivations for disliking augmentations may come from his own incompatibility with them, but that he doesn’t really have a strong intellectual, rational backing for his actions is pretty unbelievable considering he’s supposed to be a goddamn genius. It makes his character look weak and foolish, rather than tragic as they try to frame him.

“It's a good point, but Darrow isn't really set up as being insane and I don't think he's intended to be.”

He wanted to kill half the planet,and you dont think he is being really set up as being insane?Also,the fact that he is smart is only a plus in the insane department.The smarter someone is,the more likely they are to be insane.

This, I’m pretty sure his profile is making it clear he’s loopy, and even without all that, he practically goes into a cackling fit at parts. Old man, unhinged by the bitterness of seeing a world advance far away without him. That’s how you convince him in the conversation and how he’s portrayed

I should clarify. If you have the DLC (the “Explosive Mission Pack” one), the motivation for Tong helping Adam makes a lot more sense. Instead of Tong just saying “yeah, I’ll help you out, I wanted to blow the place up anyway” which seems a bit convenient and ambiguous, by rescuing Tracer from Belltower, at least he’s now in debt to Adam. I think this segment was initially going to be in the game before being violently ripped out for the preorder DLC, because the story makes a lot less sense without it. However, because it’s DLC, I think it’s fair to evaluate him as far as the base game goes, and not the add-ons.

My problem with the tutorial videos was that, for whatever reason, they choked on my system. Which made no sense at all, the rest of the game ran fine (and at high settings at that).

One thing that I liked about the physics stuff was that the interface was basically the same as the original Deus Ex’s, except with working physics.

I’m not really sure how you can say that Jensen’s surgery was unnecessary. In the actual game, we see him thrown through heavy glass, into consoles (twice!), beaten up quite a bit, and possibly hit with splash damage from the acid barrel. We’re told later that he was caught in a very, very hot building fire (!) and only avoided incineration because a retaining wall fell on him (!!). I mean… no matter what kind of medical care they have, that should be at the very least permanently disabling if not fatal without augmentations. Not to mention, Sarif probably knows that Jensen won’t suffer rejection and won’t need neuropozyne. What choice would you have made?

You can visit the local LIMB clinic and read up on Jensens augs while in Detroit. Turns out he only needed his organs and one arm replaced, but Sarif exploited a clause in his contract to have all the limbs replaced with prosthetics instead.

I too feel a bit torn between watching this season and going through the game first, specially because I don’t know how soon I’ll be able to play it. I did watch this first episode though, and it’s nice to see that this will probably be a interesting enough season. Just don’t waste all the topics of conversation already, it felt a bit like you were rushing through the first minutes desperately trying to outdone each other in ‘who will mention this plot point first instead of taking it at the speed the game is going’. Note that I’m not talking about your ‘spoilers’ regarding the NPCs future stories, but instead how quickly you jumped from one topic to the next.

On another note, it’s amazing how much this start-credits and body-reconstruction technique is so much better than ME2.

In the ME2 cutscene it always deeply annoyed me how so much attention was devoted to the heart, an organ which is deeply inconsequential to the human consciousnesses, and which although it might be of great importance in fantasy lore should not be put over some fleeting images of the brain on a science-fiction setting(yes, despite the inherent silliness of that whole scene it was the decision to put such a detail over the reconstruction of the heart that shattered my suspension of disbelief).

In this cutscene however, there is shown an extensive work on the heart and body, juxtaposed with images of a non-modified brain(do note that as I have not played the game, I do not know if there are any augmentations or plot points regarding brain-modification; but from all I’ve seen and heard all transformation is mainly related to the body sans-brain) which fits perfectly with the theme of this genre of science-fiction. The first steps of the trans-humanist perspective which the game shows here are all about first augmentating the body and removing the physical limits while keeping the brain as the recipient of consciousness and thought and this cutscene not only compares and contrasts that very well with the juxtaposition of a fully modified body versus a virgin brain but it also uses the images associated with emotional and sexual memories to establish this link which resonates very well with most people who associate the emotions we fell with the human consciousness and thus indicating to us that this part of Jensen has been kept intact while his body is modified.

A very refreshing and consistent science fiction telling, which is something I’ve been needing since the first Mass Effect.

As a last point: that commentary regarding the width of the pane of glass is the kind of small and simple explanation Shamus has been clamoring for in all those posts about holes in the plot threads and it’s a marvel to see one so expertly put there.

Yeah, as do a lot of other characters in the game. It’s probably one of the more common forms of augmentation; you can talk to someone who works in business, and she’ll talk at length about how a certain level of mental augmentation is pretty much a prerequisite for her job, regardless of whatever natural talents you have, or effort you put in.

One big plot point in the DLC bonus mission is the development of a particularly heavy form of brain augmentation technology, which Jensen objects to on moral grounds almost automatically; not because it’s messing with people’s brains, but because the research methods they’re using are horribly unethical. Brain modification really is commonplace in this world, and making your memory a little sharper isn’t seen as particularly different to replacing your arm with one that turns into a sword.

Just to offer a contrasting opinion — I found the Saint’s Row special to be hilarious. I liked Jarenth in it. Naturally, the format of a normal Spoiler Warning is somewhat different, so I couldn’t judge how he’d do in that, but I’d be more than willing to give Jarenth a go.

I actually never fell for Pritchard being the evil guy, the possibility was there but he was never the obvious suspect for me. I liked the bits when it was kinda shown that while he doesn’t really like Jensen personally it didn’t cloud his professional opinion. It’s also rare to see such characters cooperate without making it into some sort of tearsoaked “I’m sorry I was so impolite to you, you are like a brother to me” scene.

On the other hand I had some doubts about Sarif. He’s obviously in the position of power and games are usually so heavy handed with the foreshadowing on “your boss is the big bad” reveals that the “his not telling you everything” vibe was enough. To be honest a man in his position who is pretty much trying to shove the titular revolution down humanity’s collective throat whether they like it or not simply has to get his hands at least a bit dirty in the process, and again a good job of showing that.

Regarding the “I never asked for this” thing. I would imagine that their reasoning is mostly “well, he’d better not complain we saved his effin life, even if we took out a few things that could be left there… I mean, did you see the state of his liver?!” but I think it’s stated somewhere (maybe even during the operation video but I didn’t catch all of the background dialogue this time around) that Jensen actually has a clause in his contract that allows Sareth to augment him with whatever he deems suitable (not sure if it’s just in a case like this or in general).

Finally I’m pretty sure that already during the elevator talk I was hot on the trail of one of the big reveals, specifically that the “huge discovery” (I don’t think I knew it was “augment however much you wish” thing by this point) was derived from Jensen. I’m kinda curious if it was relatively obvious for other people or if I just got a lucky guess with the foreshadowing?

The great thing about this games is that most of the major characters are not evil..given that you can see their point of view once you know more about them. Each of the major factions have a point to what they do and thinking about each character in turn, I can see how in certain circumstances, I’d probably follow a certain course of action.

And the various causes interacting with each other are like watching a dozen people playing multi-dimensional chess with the unfolding situation. And you’re a pawn somewhere in the middle.

It’s a shame that the ending didn’t really capture player choice in a deeper way. I thought that faction support should have been more like in Fallout : New Vegas where you can build a relationship with the side you most agree with to push their ideology to victory. I guess the developers already had their hands full with the considerable achievement they did with making this game a copper-bottomed hit.

This is how people work. No one’s particularly evil, they just conflict with other people’s points of views and interests. Some people care less about other people, but that makes sense in their context. Another plus for Deus Ex: Havana Retribution: most characters have motivations, not alignments.

Depending on how you acted throughout the game, the 4 endings get a different flavour of voiceover. If you killed a lot of people, you justify your reasoning with “I need to stop people like me” or such. If you didn’t kill that many people, it’s more like, “I need to believe people can rise above temptation” or some such.

^This. Games (and I guess media in general) rarely portray realistic motivations for why people do the things that they do. While some of the methods characters use can sometimes be far-fetched, the motives in Human Revolution all made a lot of sense. That’s another reason I loved this game.

I loved the ending, because I was genuinely conflicted over the choice. I spent ages running from button to button (and that was how involved I was, I actually ran with my character from button to button) making decisions and then changing my mind.

EDIT: And to the OP, yeah I pretty much clicked it too, I don’t really think there was a point in the game that I didn’t click and they get more and more obvious with it, pretty much continually, so I’m not sure how much of a reveal it was meant to be. There was an impression that Jensen wasn’t getting it, or wasn’t accepting the facts in front of him

I actually had to reload the game and change my choice three times before I was satisfied. I loved it, because it was one of the first times games ascended to more than they are. There are films which are designed to make you think, books that leave you with questions and here finally was a game that did that and did it in a better way than any book or film can because it said, look you’ve played the game, you’ve seen the world. Now what do you choose?

I think faction relations would have spoiled the purity of that choice

I imagine this topic will resurface throughout the series to finally explode in the final episode but since you mention it.

I actually wasn’t that much into the final choice. I mean, I find the options given interesting, especially the fact that there’s an option that pretty much states I don’t think I’m the one who should be making this choice for everyone. That was good. Even the fact that I myself wasn’t all that much conflicted about it, I guess I’m just of one of the extreme views on the subject. What I didn’t like was the way the choice presented, it felt somewhat artificial to me, and handled throughout the game, by which I mean it hardly was. I understand that the game was huge to make as it is, they had to outsource boss battles for goodness sake, but I would like to have more branching that would allow me to kinda show what the “meJensen” thought of the subject during the game itself.

Hmm, it’s hard for me to tell, I think the ending was the bit of the game I loved the most, so I’m not impartial :D

Are you saying that you’d prefer more degrees of choice at the end? Because I certainly think there was some inflexibility, but I accepted that inflexibility as being a limit to how much one man can change the world. I’d prefer regulation without giving the Illuminati control, but I can see how that’s not possible. I’d like to do what you spoke of in spoilers, but then I don’t feel I can make the call to do that to the other people present.

Or are you saying, you’d like it placed further back in the game? In that case I don’t really agree because I look at the choice and the game slightly out of phase entities. Maybe this is the big difference from me and everyone else. I don’t see the choice being the end of the game but what comes after it. The end of the game was going to Panchea and sorting everything out and shutting everything down and confronting the villain. The game to me is the story of the things that happened to Adam Jensen and the people that took him there. In a way the story proper wasn’t about Adam Jensen but about the way the fates manipulated them, and I felt thus that it was suiting how little control he had over his destiny. We’re talking about a global spanning conspiracy and it’s clear that Adam was a pawn to most people and I feel it degrades the battle of the minds that Adam could have so much affect in that. The choice after the game was him ascending, he’d been quiet and reserved to that point but suddenly the pawn was at the end of the board and all the experiences he’s gone through could finally be summed up and expressed by him. It’s the perfect reflection of the smile in The Lives of Others (widely regarded to be one of the better films of the last decade)

As I’ve said, I view the choice as the meta-choice. The way the reader can finally understand what a mockingbird is at the end of To Kill A Mockingbird. It such an elevation, I’m struggling even to think of books that do it. But ultimately, it made no sense to me to make the decision at any point but after the end, when all the moves have been made and you can finally look back and see everything that has happened. Jensen was caught up in a swirl of experience and a decision made amidst that is a gameplay feature, nothing more than Fallout has already done. A choice made after that, is much much more than a game

Hmmm… I’ll try to drastically simplify my position or else I’ll overcomplicate it again. My Jensen was, in the end, very pro-aug, you could even say radically pro-aug. I wish I had more of a chance to play a radically pro-aug Jensen earlier in the game, sort of build him up into a person for whom the final decision was fairly obvious.

I see what you mean. I felt Jensen had his own personality established by the game and that we were playing through his story with variations. Is he strong enough to resist the urge to abuse power, how far will he go in certain directions? but beyond that he had a character arc that we weren’t deciding for him.

1) I liked how Pritchard seemed like he was going to be a bad guy and before you leave Detroit, there’s more of that — and I was convinced that if I chose different options and did things differently, that he would be a bad guy. He’s not.

2) Ruts, I’m almost 100% certain that the opening sequence does not count for the non-lethal achievement.

3) I think the cover system worked really well; but, as Josh said, mostly for the stealth play. I played on my laptop which is just barely qualified to play the game at all on the lowest settings, and I’m more interested in stealth/tech play-styles so that may skew my judgment.

4) I played chaotic stupid in my LP of the leaked beta — it was gratuitous, but not engaging. I distinctly preferred the exploratory, stealth, tech and social methods of problem solving. When I got to the bosses, this penchant, my atrocious system performance and the fact that I had no lethal weapons in my inventory really bit me in rear. For all of my later play-throughs, I carried a revolver and/or a shotgun.

2) Ruts, I'm almost 100% certain that the opening sequence does not count for the non-lethal achievement.

It does.

There are also a couple of glitches releated to what is and isn’t non-lethal. For example moving a knocked-out body can somehow kill the person. Thankfully for people that give a crap about achievements, most of those glitches don’t affect getting the achievement.
However one that can screw you over is the fact that people shot with the tranquilizer rifle can die randomly instead of ending up knocked out, forcing a reload.

Your actions do have some consequences. Depending on how you treat your environment, different environmental bits end up, well, differing. If you didn’t kill everyone/snuck by everyone in the Detroit Police Station, your face will be on the wanted posters later. If you did, only a vague, random face is there. There are other bits, but I’ll need to reconfirm them.

I am once again reminded of just what a fantastic Rube Golberg contraption our setup is. It's a miracle this show works at all.

Out of curiosity: Any reason why you don’t simply record the gameplay, send the videofile to the other hosts and place your skyperecording of everyone watching the video over it?
Mind you, Deus Ex – Psychedelic Mushroom Edition looks like there was something funky going with your recording software so that wouldn’t fix it. But it is something I’m curious about.

I think the setup they have now works well enough. Watching a recording can work fine, I mean, guys like Slowbeef and Diabetus do it all the time. But I think it’s better that they do it live, that way they can argue about what choices to make and maybe go back and do stuff they missed.

It’s what drove me away from the game, coupled with the melee cutscenes. Combat was just so static and boring that I couldn’t get myself to slog through more. I tried to avoid as much combat as possible, with some successes, but every time anyone knew where I was I just… sighed. Get cover, line up shot from behind cover because that makes a lot of sense, pop up, headshot, duck, rinse, repeat. I found DX:HR’s cover combat as bad as any other (read: as bad as Gears 2 because that’s the only other cover combat game I’ve really played; co-opping that was actually kinda fun). Such a shame :(

‘I tried to avoid as much combat as possible’ That would mean no combat. Man up, play the game properly. No alarms is where it’s at :D (I wasn’t quite hard core enough for no sightings, but I only slipped up a few times)

Of all the NPCs in the game, Pritchard is probably my favorite. I enjoyed the back-and-forth between the he and the player. On my initial run-through of the game, I never thought he was evil per se. I did, however, think he was one of those characters that, based on how the PC approached a problem, would or could ‘turn’ one way or another – help or hinder, if you will (even if it wasn’t blatent). Of course, it helps that I’ve known some IT guys and engineers that aren’t too far removed (attitude-wise, anyway) from his characterization.

Given that I’ve just recently gone through this game, this should be fun to watch – especially since my playstyle and Josh’s are vastly different.

I’d agree that Pritchard’s all right as a character — but the part of me that went through college to learn network administration still cringes at the obvious “the-writer-didn’t-actually-research-network-concepts” lines he delivers. I know, it’s the future, but other in-game evidence makes it looks like the basics are still the same as now…

One little detail I loved about that resurrection video is the ‘SARIF’ tag on the mechanical organs they installed in you. I can find ways to justify it, but it does drive home the corporate control motif that’s in this game.

By the way, those clips from DX 1? Pretty sure the Arnold Terminators had a display like that.

Now, on a somewhat more serious note: i’m almost the opposite of Josh re: cover system. As a person who grew up on Thief 1 & 2, 3rd person sneaking feels too easy for me, and while it didn’t bother me in the beginning, after a while it felt like cheating. Notably, the fact that taking cover seems like 100% guaranteed succes rate (unless the enemy has almost completely unobstructed sight of you) and that you are forced into 3rd person.

I was not that impressed by the cover-shooter mechanics, but I still found them better than the stealth aspects.

Then again, I doubt we’ll see gameplay like Dark Project in this day and age, so I feel like I’m speaking like pretentious old men playing at running the world

I think there have been rumours about Thief 4 a few years ago? I have to say as much as I loved the series my excitement at the news was somewhat reserved, the fact that I’ve seen it referred to as “Thi4f” doesn’t really fill me with confidence far as “breaking stereotypes goes either. On that note, since when is 4 a good numeral replacement for E?! I can understand A but why E?!

Eidos has said on the official forums that “Thi4f” isn’t the actual name of the game. I’ve actually mentioned this before in a prior discussion in the comment threads about the Thief games (which was quite interesting — I don’t remember what post it was attached to, however).

As soon as I met Sarif I was like “Oh hey its the obvious villain HEY OBVIOUS VILLAIN whats up bro we should hang sometime and you should totally betray me!” and from then on for the whole thing I was trying to determine when Sarif would betray me. Biggest plot twist in Human Revolution? Sarif didn’t betray you.

Which was quite impressive, number 1 rule of any fps rpg is that the guy who you start out working for will betray you and you join the other side. Second rule is the sewer level and they almost didn’t include that either I mean what the smeg?

About the will of Jensen to be resurrected and have augmentations, it is said that it was written in his work contract. So he agreed to work for Sarif, and in the chance that something like this would have happened, he agreed to undergo to the surgery.
Anyway Jensen (and other people) states that this went too far, and they added (and cut) things they weren’t supposed to.

Ah, but in Mass Effect, it was unnecesary and stupid and basically left Shepard the way she was before the incident besides weird facial scars, here it gives you super-powers!

[Several minutes later]
Well crap, that rendered my comment moot.
And yes, it’s heavily implied during the game that Jensen was only critically wounded to his head, chest and arm, but that Sarif used a clause in his contract to stow pretty much every Sarif Industries augmentation into Jensen.
The only reason you don’t start the game as a nigh-invincible mecha-lord of destruction is because that would fry your scarred brain to bits.

That also must’ve been a really interesting job offer.
“So, what’s this about you gaining power of attorney whenever I get critically injured in the line of work?”

I wouldn’t be surprised if it was some cleverly phrased clause that would actually make it sound as if it’s some form of medical coverage that protects the employee’s interest. Something along the lines of “in case of injury Sarif Industries agrees to provide the employee with replacement limbs/organs with a functional quality of at least the replaced limbs/organs as well as cover the cost or provide services and materials related to the implantation and maintenance of the replacement limbs/organs…” and so on and so forth. Normally you’d read this as them promising to do a certain minimum, I mean, that’s the direction you usually expect the corporation to try to weasel out.

My first encounter with that guy was hilarious, because I’d forgotten that you’d been encouraged to talk to him, and had assumed that he’d attack on sight. So I snuck up, hid behind a pillar a few yards away, and tossed in a gas grenade. The whole group went down in seconds. Didn’t even put up a fight. Went back to the questgiver, and he was all “How was it? Did you manage to talk him around?” Kind of awkward. Reloaded an earlier save and tried again right away – and good thing I did, I rather liked that conversation – but jeez. For a badass supersoldier, he sure has some severe weaknesses.

Rocket launcher to the face? Yep. More rockets to the face? Yep. All of my rockets and grenades? Yep. All of the rockets and grenades in the room? Yep.

Finally died to my last shotgun round. If i hadn’t hit i would have been out of ways to kill the bastard. Had i not been spoilered on the ridiculous boss fights i might not have kept all the rocket ammo…

451 is indeed a reference to Faranheit 451, but beyond that it’s a reference to Looking Glass Games, who first used it as a door code in the orginal System Shock (I think). It evidently was a door code used at one time at the actual company. Bioshock was developed by Irrational, who originally developed Shock 2 as contractors for Looking Glass, and the first Deus Ex was headed up by Warren Spector (working with Ion Storm at the time, but who originally worked for LG, including being the lead developer on Shock 1). And of course, the Bioshocks and DE:HR can both be considered to fall somewhere on the “immersive sim” spectrum of gameplay first popularized by LG.

No, seriously. Not cover (this game did it very well, as it happens), not ridiculous small bullet-tolerance (again.. I disagree with josh, I think it fits in the game-world and universe for people not to be, well, all like those three goddamned outsourced bossfight meatheads), but I really dislike Iron sights in all games. WHY. why do people bother with that junk. What’s wrong with basic normal target cursor or even a laser-pointer that actually interacts with the game world – why do people want to obscure 40% of their screen with a gunmodel and the rest with muzzle flashes?

Actually.. I kind of suspect the guys who did the boss battles were thinking exactly like Josh. “cover? paah, who uses cover! sneaking, talking, taking a calm approach? Paaaah, who does that, naw, it should be shootkillmacmurdermaim, right? bullet damage? Nonono, this is a videogame, see, the guys NEED to take a bahjillion hits.” .. And you know how well that turned out. So, I can’t agree with Josh’s view on the combat… I’d say the boss battles show EXACTLY what is wrong with the “old-school” style shooter (and, indeed the entire idea of “THIS IS A BOSS BATTLE, NOW PUNY PLAYER DIES 100 TIMES”) bullcrap. And yes, I know the first deus ex was an older game, but I can’t call it a shooter (and I don’t exactly like to call this one either, when ‘shooter’ implies modern duty: call of warfare).

When done well,ironsights gives you less recoil and more accuracy.Its rarely done well though.

As for old style shooters,that is not what is wrong with old style shooters.Serious sam and painkiller are leagues above call of duty*.Heck,even the old duke nukem,doom and wolfenstein are leagues above call of duty.

I really enjoy iron-sights when done right, the trade-off between accuracy and being able to see well at times is a pretty fun mechanic.

Another thing about iron sights is that I always find them inherently more accurate than shooting from the corner of the screen simply because the bullets actually travel in the direction I’m aiming as opposed to an awkward diagonal line completely at the mercy of some computerized range finder.

Anyways, I’m usually not a big fan of stealth games because it’s apparently extremely difficult to do well without falling back on the mechanic of exploiting a third person camera. I’m sort of disappointed to see that this has worked its way into the cover shooting as well.

The dress of characters is an indication of the person’s views in the game. The forward thinking people are dressed in futuristic clothing, and the traditionalists/luddites favour clothing more in keeping with the past – grey suits etc.

Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy the 3rd person perspective, though definitely not because they give 3 monitors worth of peripheral vision. Rather being able to see exactly were my character is and exactly what he’s doing goes a long way to make up for the loss of sensory input from viewing through a simple screen.

That said though it’s still extremely stupid how much the 3rd person camera gets exploited in stealth games.

I think that’s what he was saying. Although it doesn’t give you perspective, it gives you a visual awareness of your body and surroundings that kinda replaces it.

I don’t like First Person in general and I didn’t like the first person in this game. Thematically it fits quite well, but I felt like a moving camera, particularly when crouching. Since they clearly had a body and animations, I wish there was some way of staying like that

I think the main problem with making a game in 3rd person is that it requires a lot of thinking ahead. Skyrim for example lets switch you playing in 3rd person mode but the fact that much of the game is spent in dark, narrow dungeons (not to mention the clunktastic combat) meant that I just couldn’t stand playing that way. All I could do was obsessively tap it on every 30 seconds to see what I looked like.

Personally, I agree with the Errant Signal guy (my new best friend, thank you Shamus!) in that I feel the gameplay mechanics are much improved over the shoddy (though no less ambitious) mechanics of the original. Sorry Josh, but your complaints come off as a mixture of standard hipster hate for all contemporary tri-a titles and nostalgia goggles.

Actually, I’ve never played DX1 or 2, so there’s no specific nostalgia for the previous entries in the series. I just don’t like cover based shooting in general. I find it makes every encounter very flat and one dimensional: sit behind a chest high wall and wait for someone to pop their stupid head up so you can shoot it and then duck back down. Sure, it looks nice, and it may feel “realistic,” but as someone who cut his teeth on games like Jedi Knight, it makes the combat feel very slow and restrictive.

Everyone is too young to remember these days, but cover-based shooters used to be a thing–they were all over arcades, and you clicked a button to pop out of cover and then shot people with a lightgun. They were working with the technology they had, but the games were still… well… i wasn’t fond of them.

“Realistic” would probably be more along the lines of get a vague idea of where the enemy is then throw all of your bullets in that direction. If you average less than 300 rounds per hit, good shooting!

Actually I should have said contemporary game mechanics. I’ll admit my experience with cover based games is fairly limited, but most expanded my options rather than restricted them…DX:HR most of all. Regardless, playing head peek-a-boo is an issue of bad design, or you not taking advantage of the possibilities. Either way, the mechanics aren’t at fault.

I think it is the constant stream of small cutscenes in DX:HR that make it feel slow. For most actions you do there is a couple of seconds of delay due to some mini-cutscene. Both in the interface and in actual gameplay.

But where you are wrong is that you die too easily in the game. Although it is better than other contemporaries, you can still soak up pretty much damage. you shouldn’t survive a direct hit to the head. It’s as simple as that.

Regarding Jedi Knight. That series (especially Jedi Outcast) has the absolutely best melee action in any game I’ve played. It’s just so fluid and fun to play.

“you shouldn't survive a direct hit to the head. It's as simple as that.”

A broad assertion that ignores many facts about setting, genre, and game balance. You’re arguing from a “realism” standpoint. If you want realism, then how about we get rid of health regen, the crosshair, your ability to carry 100 lbs of equipment, and about a hundred other contrivances that make things “easier” but also more fun.

Some games are less forgiving with damage. Some are more.

I agree with Josh. Once in a while I’d pop up out of cover and get insta-killed by a blast to the face. Perhaps the game has since been patched, but I vividly remember going from full health to dead in a single burst from a common mook on normal difficulty. Insta-death is not fun, no matter how “realistic” it is.

No, I’m actually not. While I was a bit over the top to provoke a bit I am not talking from a realism standpoint. It is much more because I really like it when I am forced to plan fights ahead instead of just rushing in, then discovering that there are a dozen enemies and then just kill them without breaking a sweat. Also sneaky kills are lots of fun.

“get rid of health regen”

Yes, that is an abomination. Health packs are not much better. You can heal between missions. I didn’t mind much in DX:HR because I stealth all the time so the only time I ever lost hit points was in the boss fights.

“the crosshair”

Nah. That can stay. I’m not against gamey stuff (that whole immersive perspective is perplexing to me).

“your ability to carry 100 lbs of equipment”

That can also stay. Although I think both DX1 and DX:HR did well to have some limitation on equipment so that you are forced to choose what stuff you want.

“Some games are less forgiving with damage. Some are more.”

Yeah, I understand this. Sometime I am even grateful for me being able to take a whole lot of damage. But I want more games that are designed around there being very easy to die, forcing you to plan your moves accordingly.

“Perhaps the game has since been patched, but I vividly remember going from full health to dead in a single burst from a common mook on normal difficulty. Insta-death is not fun, no matter how “realistic” it is.”

Full health as in 200 HP (I.e. full regen health + max stim packs or what they were called in DX:HR)? I played on “Give me Deus Ex” difficulty, I think you could be insta-killed with 100 HP (full regen health), but not with 200 HP. I did also try a few stand-up shooting fights with my pistol versus half a dozen guys with assault rifles and I thought it not too hard to survive, at least if I took up a good position first.

At least health regen makes sense in human revolution.Im usually against that,but in games like halo and human revolution,its ok,because thats what your guy is:A superhuman with nifty gadgets.But while its fun to have no health replenishing during the mission as an option(which is one of the many reasons why original call of duty is still a good game),its not really a good thing.Dying a lot is usually not fun to play.Except for a game like I wanna be the guy.

I’m not much bothered by the ingame justifications for that stuff (although Adam’s entire skin must be made out of some kind of easily repairable material capable of stopping high velocity bullets and explosions, which is quite amazing really). What bothers me is that the game design encourages careless gameplay. But as I said, it didn’t bother me much in DX:HR, because they encourage stealth in so many other ways.

I fail to see any shoddy gameplay mechanics in DX1 (only bad AI). The stealth has only been surpassed by the Thief games. The shooting was also very satisfying (at least for me). I admit that DX:HR is ok (it has the best stealth since Thief 3) and the shooting is ok, but still behind DX1.

Why is it that when somebody prefers something older they get accused of having nostalgia goggles? It is equally accurate to say that it is you that are using your new-and-shiny goggles and thinks DX:HR is better because it is new and shiny.

DX:HR is different and I can sort of understand why some people might like it better, but in for me DX1 is definitely better. And yes, the standards for AAA-games have changed in 10 years, but in my opinion that standard is much worse now than when DX1 came out.

(No I can’t be bothered viewing two long videos in order to find out what Yahtzee and Errant Signal thinks.)

“It is equally accurate to say that it is you that are using your new-and-shiny goggles and thinks DX:HR is better because it is new and shiny.”

You’d think so, but it’s not. Specifically for this reason:

“And yes, the standards for AAA-games have changed in 10 years, but in my opinion that standard is much worse now than when DX1 came out.”

To say that the mechanics of videogames have regressed in the past 10 years goes against basic common sense. If as a whole they didn’t improve, they wouldn’t be as popular. This simple logic gives far more weight to the argument for you having nostalgia goggles rather than me being blinded by ‘shiny ‘n new’.

If you prefer the old ways, good on you, but…no, your personal preferences don’t mean it was actually better ‘back in the old days’. Sorry.

Sorry,but thats not true.Fifa/madden/nhl series were very popular despite the only improvements for a while being maybe a new facelift and new player names.Modern warfare/battlefield series are another example of barely improving,yet still popular franchises.

I do agree that gameplay has advanced in the last decade,though,I just dont think the reason you gave for it holds any water.

“To say that the mechanics of videogames have regressed in the past 10 years goes against basic common sense.”

Then don’t use common sense, but strict logic instead.

“If as a whole they didn't improve, they wouldn't be as popular.”

Of course they would. With the escalating cost of video game production the game producers need to cater to a wider audience and thus the games get watered doen to the most common denominator so that even the most stupid player can play the game.

You are confusing “better mechanics” with “simpler mechanics”.

“Press a button to win”-mechanics (which is what modern AAA-games seem to aim for) are not better, but worse imo.

I also want to iterate that DX:HR is good because it actually reverses this trend and has much interesting and involved game mechanics than most of it’s contemporaries.

For your information: That was not construed as to being insulting. But merely information that just becasue common sense says something doesn’t mean it is correct. Common sense is what you use instead of thinking something through.

At the end when you talk about how he never has a dialogue choice to discuss how the augments affected him. You actually do, and I was very pleasantly surprised by it.

When you get the chance to debate with Taggart during the second visit to Detroit, one of the dialogue options is to say that he never wanted to be augmented. In fact, it nearly ruined him and got him to smash the mirror in his apartment the first week. The mirror is there in game and you can look at it (as I hope you do during this season.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to this season. I didn’t play Deus Ex 1 (though it most certainly is on my list of old games I need to play), but I’ll be paying attention to your commentary.

Also, I’m with Rutz and everyone else who got screwed out of the no kills trophy the first time through.

Funny thing… I couldn’t find the doors to the auditorium, so I ended up knocking out all the guards and looked at Sandoval’s emails and then escaped through the back hallway/stairs, where I also knocked out the guards. >.>

That’s exactly the sort of spoilers that I need for my entertainment. My cynicism is past making sense, so whenever I run into an “obvious bad guy” I roll my eyes and refuse to believe otherwise until the very end at which point it has already poisoned the experience.

By knowing that whatever I’m going through doesn’t have a particular cliche I don’t constantly beat myself out of the experience by telling myself that “this dude will totally turn evil any second. Yep, aany second now”.

It’s surprising (to me) how Darrow turned out given that he developed all the technology in order to help mankind, but became jaded in both how it slipped out of his control..and ironically he could not be helped by his own work to overcome his disabilities.

Although people thought that Sarif would turn to the Dark Side at some point along the game due to his flexible and pragmatic approach to his work..his mentor Darrow was basically sowing the seeds for his protege to fail though an extreme object lesson.

Sarif is the youthful idealistic embodiment of the American Dream, but Darrow is the dark reflection of what that dream can become if wisdom is not used to ask whether what you are doing is right..

At one point,you find out that he was responsible for terrorists finding out the codes for the building attacked in your first mission.I was so “Ha,knew he was the traitor”,but then you talk to him,and it turns out he just screwed up while he was digging up your past,because if you invest so much money into someone,you better know who they are.I was pleasantly surprised that all those hints led to nowhere,since he isnt evil at all,only a human prone to human mistakes.

It takes a while, but at a point you realise that this game isn’t the sort of game to have evil people as such. Even the people most clearly ‘evil’ have sides to their arguments that made me want to support them. In fact this game has people instead of cliches all round. Including Megan Reed and Faridah Malik

You know that part where a guy gets killed by the invisible bitch lady?
I was insanely paranoid for the next five minutes because SHE’S STILL HERE ISN’T SHE???

And then I was kind of disappointed when I saw that she was just gone after that. I expected her to just jump me from somewhere sometime after that, and I just waited for a surprise that never came. It felt sort of anticlimactic.

Man, that could’ve been a good place to have her chop off an arm from you or something. It would be a nice easter egg for people, if the game could recognize people who are worriedly looking around and then she would be the one who does you in.

Boss fights don’t count towards the non-lethal achievement, so if you give up and just start tossing grenades, it’s not going to disqualify you for it in that respect. I’m not even sure if those guys can be knocked out.

I’ve been told that you can do it with a Stun-Gun, but I’m too much of a wuss to find out if that’s true. I just used the pistol that I always carry with me. After enough upgrades, you’d be surprised how much damage it can do.

Besides, apparently he still dies even if you use non-lethal armaments.

It’s not difficult to do at all. The last time I fought Barrett I literally stood in front of him firing and reloading the stun gun over and over until the battle ended, since you reloaded quicker than he can recover from the shock.

Go back and pick up a rocket launcher and a few emp grenades.Then shoot him with a rocket,and toss a grenade.Do this 4 times,and hes dead.Same for every other boss.Alternatively,stun him and toss regular grenades at him,or use the explosive barrels.But stunning is the most important part of any boss.

I dunno, I found the cover shooting in the PC version rather clunky and awkward. I rented and beat the PS3 version and ended up getting the PC version on sale a few months later, and while I did not have any complaints with using cover in the PS3 version, it just felt really clunky on the PC, I don’t know why.

It wasn’t a particularly amazing port either, can someone explain to me why these games use mouse smoothing by default? Cause I had to change that manually through .ini files and it’s always a pain in the arse.

Sometimes you’ve got to cut it or you’ll be writing a comment the whole day. Mouse+Keyboard and the 360 controllers are the most likely ones to have for PC gaming, especially since some modern games don’t like non-360 compliant gamepads.

Does the game at any point reference Martin Caidan’s Cyborg and the famous TV show based on it The Six Million Dollar Man(1974-78)? It pretty much originated the cybernetic enhanced agent as protagonist in popular culture.

Thanks for starting this game. I wanted to play it because I loved the old DX so much, but I still keep leaning toward games I can play without rebooting into another OS. Given that this includes games like the Half-Life series, Bioshock, and Diablo III, I think I’ll be almost as satisfied watching a snarky play-through of Human Revolution.

I was honestly a bit surprised by Sarif myself. I mean, dude knows way more than he is telling, but he indeed never backstabs you.

I found combat survivability acceptable once I got my dermal armor implants. Well, for a good chunk of the game, at least. Once those dudes in super-heavy armor started showing up in groups, it did become something of a problem.

Incidentally, Eliza eventually led to a “Are you confused as to what setting you’re in?” moment. It was pretty much the cyberpunk version of “I can’t see what the mass graves could possibly have to do with vanishing patrols” in NWN2. Dude, Jensen, if someone has a high-end hologram projection of herself being sent from a massive hidden bunker with an outrageous power draw, she is an AI.

EDIT: Note – I haven’t watched the episode yet, so Shamus, Josh and/or Rutskarn might have pointed it out on the show already. I’m out of the house at the moment, so I’ll watch the episode when I get home.

Know what made me definitely figure out the she is an AI reveal? One of the emails, specifically the measurement one. It was something about some company wanting Eliza to wear their clothes or something and a person was trying to get her measurements, which proved harder than you’d think. I had suspicions earlier but that was the moment when it all fell into place and clicked for me.

I’m so torn… I plan to play this game someday, and I know it’s one of those games that will have a lot of twists and turns, so do I want to watch Spoiler Warning and have them all ruined for me (and maybe never end up playing in the end, seeing as I have no free time anywhere in the foreseeable future… maybe in like 2014 I’ll have a day off), or do I want to sit out of this round, and lose out on all this entertainment?

Shamus, I’m on XP with no font smoothing, so there’s a chance I’m seeing this because of that, but the new font you have for your post titles has horrible jagged aliasing on slanted lines; made all the more visible because of how big its size is.

Probably followed the scientist he has on his shoulder, while those two watched, somewhat horrified, as he knocks the dude out. At this point, they figure they might have a chance of surviving and make a run for it, whereupon he shoots them dead? Or something like.

Let’s try to deconstruct this: there are three scientists- the important one and two less important ones.

Barrett needs to eliminate all witnesses, and these scientists are not badasses with concealed carry. Barrett trudges into the room where all three are.

One of scientist, already on alert from the alarms, runs out of the room and slams the door shut behind him. If Barrett is supremely confident of his team’s ability to make a perimeter and of his abilities, he probably doesn’t feel the need to check both sides before entering a room, nor feel the need to immediately start pursuit.

The scientist cowers by the glass fire doors because there are fires on the other end of the corridor, his only other escape route is blocked, and he’s panicking.

Barrett knocks out the important scientist (live capture), giving enough time for the other unimportant to start running by him.

Barrett shoots roughly at him, incidentally taking out the door, but doesn’t totally kill him. He picks up the important one, walks out, throws the mostly dead one into death, shoots the cowering one, walks off into the fires.

To me, Human Revolution was much more Ghost in the Shell than it was Deus Ex. The sleek, futuristic architecture (which somehow disappeared in the sequel). The holographic computers (which somehow disappeared in the future). The guns, the cars, the sleek, well, everything: Just the aestetics and the sense of the entire world screams Ghost in the Shell to me, especially with the focus on corporatism as opposed to the ancient conspiracies (which, as you mention, HR seems to have thrown in as an afterthought to tie in with the original game).

GitS did have more similarity to the original Deus Ex in the philosophy front, though, in that it emphasised transhumanism more in a communal context (especially the evolution of communications systems, memes and the like). That, and that both of those actually *had* a unified philosophy. Every time someone in Human Revolutions equals mechanical implants to [INSERT MODERN-DAY HOT TOPIC HERE], a cyberneticist (or a molecular biologist) loses his patience.

I think Human Revolutions is a good, or possibly even great, game and I think the developers did a great job ‘updating’ the System Shock/Deus Ex experience into a modern-day context gameplay-wise, but story-wise I will never be able to consider this anything other than a standalone game apparently based on the GitS universe.

Yay, Deus Ex! I’m so happy I managed to finish my play-through last week so I can now watch this show while my memory of it is still fresh. I might even start a second (on the hardest difficulty) to play along…

Someone might already have mentioned this, but if you hack into Pritchard’s computer, you find an e-mail there which helps to explain just why he dislikes Adam so much. ;)

It’s nice that they kept the 0451 tradition, but I’m BITTERLY disappointed that DX:HR dropped the tradition of including a quote from a famous philosopher or otherwise important figure during each of the endings. It was SUCH a wasted opportunity.

Also, I agree with Josh about thinking that Adam dies WAY too easily in this game. The game goes on and on quite a bit about how oh so dangerous augmented people are, that they can tear through normal people like a rhino through a daffodil field, but when you consider that one or two shotgun blasts to the chest (or even a couple of guys with ordinary pistols) at close range is enough for some druggie on the streets to take out Jensen, well, it causes disconnect.

I feel that the devs should have made it so you could literally turn Adam Jensen into some sort of near-invincible cyborg Rambo that could rampage through an entire complex, if you picked all the combat-oriented augments. After all, if you pick all the stealth-related augments, it’s completely possible to go through the ENTIRE game with a Ghost rating, apart from boss fights. (There’s videos on Youtube demonstrating this.)